Pumpkin Bread Pudding with Caramel Sauce

My friend Sarah, for some strange reason, loves getting up at 7 am, cooking an entire Thanksgiving dinner from scratch, and feeding us, useless friend sad sacks who do nothing other than buy a couple of pints of ice cream and beer for dinner. She is truly a gem of a friend, one who must be savoured and held up as a prime example of a great pal. Her menus are always homey with a slight twist so that you never feel cheated of a traditional meal but are still startled ever so slightly out of your Thanksgiving rut before you settle comfortably back, relishing every bit. My ghostly longing for pumpkin pie was completely exorcised by this dessert, which is mainly wads of soft, spicy and custardy bread doused in caramel. It is incredibly, richly good. I also really think you should buy a pint of very creamy vanilla ice cream to melt over the top and steal bits of cold cream into your mouth along with the pumpkin-soaked bread. This recipe, with slight adaptation, comes from the Epicurious website.

Bread pudding
2 cups half and half
1 15-ounce can pure pumpkin
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
10 cups 1/2-inch cubes egg bread (about 10-ounces)
1/2 cup raisins

I actually baked a sweet egg bread in my bread maker for this recipe, since I knew I would have a hard time finding a nice challah-like bread at my grocery store. Overkill? Probably. But, honestly, it's really easy to bake up a loaf in a bread machine and it tastes so much better than those strange plastic loaves most of us have to deal with at the grocery store (as Nigella would say).

Caramel sauce
1 1/4 cups (packed) dark brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup whipping cream

For bread pudding: Preheat oven to 350°F. Whisk half and half, pumpkin, dark brown sugar, eggs, ginger, allspice, cloves, cinnamon and vanilla extract in large bowl to blend. Fold in bread cubes. Stir in golden raisins. Transfer mixture to 11x7-inch glass baking dish. Let stand 15 minutes.

Bake pumpkin bread pudding until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare caramel sauce: Whisk brown sugar and butter in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat until butter melts. Whisk in cream and stir until sugar dissolves and sauce is smooth, about 3 minutes. I actually cooked the sauce for much longer, maybe 10 minutes. It thickened a little more but seemed relatively unaffected.

Serve warm with caramel sauce.